‘Is it dead?’ Zicre looked at Kheda for confirmation, hugging an arm wrenched bodily out of its shoulder socket. Fearful faces all around begged for the same reassurance.
Kheda walked forward and laid a hand on the creature’s muzzle. The twilight-blue scales were cold but not with the burning chill of magic. No breath issued from the wide nostrils and the lolling blue tongue didn’t so much as twitch when he pushed it with a tentative foot. He looked again at the creature’s unwounded eye, now dull and clouded beneath a drooping eyelid. ‘Yes.’
Someone raised a shaky cheer of celebration and others soon joined in. Men pressed close all around Kheda, shoving at the dead dragon as if they needed to touch it to convince themselves it was truly defeated.
‘My lord?’ Mezai looked to Kheda for permission, his knife poised over one of the spines behind the dragon’s neck. Kheda nodded and watched the shipmaster dig out the needle-sharp scale. ‘How’s this for a talisman, my lord?’ Mezai grinned, exultant. ‘The Gossamer Shark won’t go down like the Mist DoveV
A group of huntsmen began disentangling the corpse of their friend from the dragon’s dead foreclaws, ripping out the talons for their own prize as they did so. Out of the corner of his eye, Kheda saw a troop of Chazen warriors set about hacking off the spiked tip of the dragon’s tail, brushing aside the dead flies and carrion beetles that the sudden cold had killed. Emboldened, others used the ropes to scramble up the creature’s sides, intent on digging their knives into the wounds already splitting its hide. The mountain hollow grew loud with congratulation, speculation and the heady joking of men who’d half-expected to die instead of see victory. The youth Ridu’s hysterical laughter rang out at some inane jest. Kheda smiled wordlessly and walked away. Men who had fled the fearful fog in the first place or broken beneath the murderous hailstorm emerged from the trees, shamefaced. Some looked hopefully to Kheda for permission to claim their share of the fallen creature’s teeth and scales. Others fell to their knees, faces in the dirt, begging for his forgiveness. He ignored them all.
‘My lord?’ Beyau caught up with the warlord, face anxious.
‘Don’t you want to claim a trophy?’ Kheda gestured back towards the plundered corpse. ‘Before the day warms up enough to start it stinking?’
‘There’s fewer dead than I feared, my lord,’ Beyau said stoutly.
‘Still too many for comfort.’ Kheda slowed reluctantly, seeing that Beyau was limping painfully. This creature would have died without their blood being shed. Didn’t I just bring these men to a meaningless death?
‘They made the choices that brought them to such a fate, my lord.’ Beyau’s face twisted with emotion. ‘And this is a victory for Chazen over magic and malice, at last.’
‘And a victory must be bought at a price if it is to have any lasting value.’ Kheda tried to keep the desolation out of his voice. He stared down at the ground for a moment, before lifting his eyes to the trees and the sky now clearing above them. ‘I want a tower of silence built on the beach,’ he said slowly. ‘Two, if needs be. The men who died here died for the whole domain. Let’s hope that gives some value to their families’ losses. And those who lived through this slaughter must remember those who didn’t, when they’re praised as heroes the length and breadth of these islands. See to it, Beyau.’
Still wracked with a chill that the hot sun couldn’t warm away, Kheda turned his back on the butchery of the dead dragon and began walking towards the coast. His sword scabbards hung empty in his belt. He realised he didn’t know if it had been his blade or Dev’s that had finally killed the beast. He decided it really didn’t matter.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The beach on Boal was a long bank of pale sand crowned with low tangles of midar. Violet flowers glowed among the long glossy leaves outspread to welcome the rains. Ragged furrows in the sand showed where the horn-backed turtles had crawled up the beach under cover of night to dig their nests and lay their eggs.
Kheda walked carefully down to the water’s edge to stroll along the firm, wet sand. Every now and then an adventurous ripple nudged at his toes. He looked down to see his feet still bruised where someone had trampled them in the chaos of the cloud dragon’s death. His face was still scabbed from the hail’s assault.
But everything is healing. Everyone is healing. And the families of those that died are honoured for the sake of those who fell fighting for Chazen’s future.
He looked along the gentle curve of the shore to the far headland where a solitary pinnacle of shaped white stone rose from a grove of nut palms.
I suppose it makes sense for Itrac to visit this particular tower of silence. Boal is where they were first attacked by the wild men and their magic, her and Chazen Saril and Olkai Chazen. I wonder what she will see in her dreams. Will echoes from those peaceful days offer her hope for an untroubled future? Or will any guidance from the past be lost in the chaos of recent events?
There’s not much I can do about that. But I can rid this domain of the last distortion of magic.
He walked towards Velindre, who was sitting some distance down the beach. Still dressed in her guise of zamorin scholar, she was leaning back on her hands with her long legs outstretched as she stared up into the sky, intent on the clouds scudding up from the south. A breeze tousled her fine blonde hair, now grown to a softness that nevertheless did little to threaten her imposture. The lines in her face were carved deeper than before, skin burned by sun and wind taut over her angular features.
‘There’ll be rain this afternoon.’ Kheda walked up the beach to the dry sand beyond the high-water mark. Mindful of the carved ironwood box he was carrying, he sat beside the magewoman.
‘Indeed.’ Velindre’s thoughts were on something else entirely.
‘You’ll be returning to your home soon, so I brought you this.’ Kheda placed the wooden box carefully on her lap.
‘What?’ Velindre dragged herself away from contemplating the skies and frowned. ‘What’s this? I want that dragon’s egg—’
‘And you’ll get it,’ said Kheda curtly. ‘This is something else.’
Velindre opened the lid of the box to reveal a plain casket of rock crystal. Iridescent dust inside sparkled in the sunlight. She went to lift the lid.
Kheda held her hand back. ‘Don’t open it.’
‘Why not?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s all that remains of Dev.’ Kheda stared out over the turquoise sea, far away across the deeper blue of the open ocean to the far horizon where the sea couldn’t be distinguished from the line of turbulent clouds presaging the next wave of rainstorms. ‘And I don’t want it blowing all over this beach. Come to that, the winds from the south could carry some part of him over the entire Archipelago.’
‘Which would not be a good thing.’ Velindre looked down at the casket. ‘All things considered.’
‘You burn your dead on the mainland, so Risala tells me,’ Kheda continued with distant courtesy. ‘We don’t do that here, we don’t know your rites—but I gathered what ashes I could, in case you wanted to inter them somewhere.’
‘Fire may be the ultimate purification but you still don’t want whatever remains of Dev making any claim on Chazen’s future.’ Velindre sounded bitter.
‘Whatever good he did for the domain is honoured in the tales of his death in my service that are being told around the evening fires,’ Kheda said slowly. ‘That will suffice for his legacy.’
Velindre carefully lifted the crystal casket up and studied the contents as best she could. ‘The gems that were crushed to powder, they’re all mixed in with the ash.’
‘I couldn’t see any way of separating them.’ Kheda shrugged. ‘Or any point, come to that. Magic was woven into his very being in life.’ Velindre smiled reluctantly. ‘What about those gems that were driven into the walls of the cave? Have you recovered those?’